CHAPTER VIII
NADIR'S CAMPAIGNS, 1734-6 : BEGINNINGS OF HIS NAVY

WHILST Tahmasp Khan Jalayir was completing his subjugation of the
Gulf coastal districts, Nadir went to Shiraz, where he remained for over
two and a half months ; during his stay there, he appointed Mirza
Muhammad Taqi Khan Shirazi Deputy-Governor of Pars. This Mirza
Muhammad Taqi Khan, who was mustaufi of Shiraz, was the son of
Irlajji Muhammad ; from generation to generation this family had had
in their possession the post of mir-ab or chief of the water supply of Shiraz
and Qumisha.1 Taqi Khan, although not gifted as a military leader or
as an administrator, afterwards made extraordinary progress, owing
to the influence which, for some unexplained reason, he was able to acquire
over Nadir.

On the 18th April, 1734, Nadir left Shiraz for Isfahan, and heard while
he was on his way that a son had been born to Rida Quli and Fatima
Sultan Begum on the 2ist March,2 The fact that this son was given
the name of Shahrukh was, apparently, the first indication that Nadu-
was deliberately seeking to copy Timur. True, this Shahrukh was not
his son, but his grandson, but, at the time when his own sons were born
he was still an obscure individual, and he could not then have had any
inkling of what fate had in store for him. At this time, however, he was
well launched upon his career of conquest and aggrandizement. It is
impossible to say when he first conceived this idea of modelling himself
upon Timur, but the following combination of circumstances may have
led him to do so. First, Nadir, like Timur, was of Turanian and not
Persian origin (it will be recalled that, after he and Afemad Pasha had con-
cluded the treaty of December, 1733, he had written to the Sultan of
Turkey drawing attention to the kinship between the Turks and the
Turkomans, thereby clearly regarding himself as one of the latter)8;
secondly, he had been brought up in the neighbourhood of Kalat, with
which natural fortress Timur's name was closely associated* ; in the third
place, it so happened that his second wife's name was Gauhar Shad, the
same as that of Timur's daughter-in-law, the wife of Shahrukh. In addi-
tion, both Timur and Nadir were men of little education (Nadir had
practically none until he was past middle-age), but they each had unusually

1 Fars-Nama, p. 175.
' T.N., p. 141.

* See p. 75 above.
4 Timur's forces captured Kalat after a long siege in 1382.

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